


Past Midnight

by storiesfortravellers



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Cinderella - Freeform, Dreams, Fairy Tale Elements, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Masturbation, Memory Loss, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 15:37:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3176887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesfortravellers/pseuds/storiesfortravellers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier keeps dreaming about a man. He thinks this must be that man that rescued him from Pierce.</p><p>A strangely non-cracky response to this prompt at comment-fic on lj: <i> Avengers movieverse, Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes, Cinderella AU with Bucky as Cinderella, Steve as the prince, and Pierce as the evil stepfather</i>, (though it's really only like Cinderella in Bucky's mind)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Past Midnight

Light, harsh, fluttering through the leaves. His eyes open.

He remembers his dream. 

Some of what he remembers might not be a dream. 

It feels like a story, one he heard long ago.

\--

A man. Not his father. 

Something like a father, but skewed, slid over into something else.

He remembers obeying the not-father’s words. Every command.

He remembers that he felt like he was nothing without the mission, like nothing meant more than his not-father’s orders. 

He remembers the not-father looked older, the lines in his face deeper, every time he saw him.

He remembers slaps, punches. A chair, biting down, then searing pain. 

He remembers submitting. Never questioning. 

And then. Something different.

Someone must have rescued him. 

It’s hard to remember who.

\--

He sleeps many more nights before he finally dreams of the other man. He is lying in the dirt and looking up at the sun, squinting. He looks away, and suddenly he remembers, he can imagine the man’s face.

It is a strange image and it keeps changing. Sometimes he is small, thin, and sometimes he is large and powerful. Sometimes he is smiling, leaning his head in as if the two of them know each other. Sometimes he is bleeding, desperate; he is trying to tell the Soldier something, but the Soldier cannot hear what he’s saying.

He feels a warmth at the memory, small and sharp. 

He remembers touching the man’s hair, gently running fingers through it.

_He remembers what a person feels like._

He knows then for certain: this must be the man who saved him from his not-father.

\--

The Soldier dreams of the not-father’s home. A woman walks in; she knows the not-father. The not-father shoots her.

“Scrub the floors clean,” the not-father tells him, “And make the body unrecognizable. Then go finish your job.”

The Solider obeys. He always obeys.

He shouts at himself in his dream, tells him he does not have to follow this order. 

He wakes and does not understand, does not remember, how they made him so willing. He only remembers that when he was with the not-father, he just couldn’t ever get the idea to disobey.

Someone made him a good soldier. Strong and fast. Fearless. Happy to shed blood. A good soldier always follows orders. 

He knows that he is not a good soldier any more. He is not sure what he is.

\--

Many nights later, he dreams of his rescuer again. He is drowning and his rescuer pulls him out of the water, leaves him in the grass. 

He wakes and he knows this is not quite right. 

He thinks that maybe he pulled the rescuer out of the water, but none of it is clear.

He closes his eyes and tries to remember his rescuer’s smile. 

He cannot, and it hurts worse than he could have imagined.

\--

The not-father called him beautiful sometimes. He said it like it was a failure, something the Soldier had done wrong.

Maybe that was why the rescuer came for him. The rescuer wanted the Soldier for himself, wanted to hold him down and press his body against him, into him. 

The Soldier thinks about it, and he’s not sure if it’s desire or memory. But he reaches down and is surprised that his own body has responded to the thought. 

He doesn’t remember that happening. Not ever.

When he is finished, he feels… fear. 

But also something else. Something like victory. Like he has done something wrong and the not-father was not able to stop him.

Maybe the rescuer is not real. Maybe he is a delusion. But even if that is true, the rescuer has given him this.

\--

He faces his rescuer on the street. The rescuer calls for him, wants him to come near.

The Soldier shoots. Misses.

(It is rare to miss).

Another memory:

Music. The sound of trumpets and clarinets and drums, scratchy and dotted, flowing from a record player.

His rescuer, small, wearing a thin white shirt with no sleeves. They are dancing, the Soldier’s hand on the rescuer’s back. Heat between them. Something else, something that makes it hard to breathe.

Maybe this is why the rescuer saved him: because they danced together. They danced, and then the rescuer could not forget him. 

Maybe the rescuer looked for him, and the not-father kept him hidden.

Maybe, the rescuer is looking for him still.

\--

Another dream, and it reaches into him, pulls at something far and faded, like tearing at his roots.

The rescuer is sad, tired. Lonely. The Soldier offers help, but the rescuer refuses. He does not want to seem weak.

The Soldier feels, deep in his bones, that he must protect the rescuer. He holds him close. 

The smell of soap, a hint of sweat. 

He wakes, and he realizes that he does not know if the rescuer is safe. 

He does not know if the not-father has killed him.

\--

He walks into town, quickly finds clothes that keep his appearance secret. 

He has a mission (it is a mission but it is not an order, and it feels sickeningly strange, but he does not care).

He will find and protect the rescuer.

He has not forgotten his many skills. He tracks the man to a SHIELD facility and follows him as he goes home. 

He waits, watches. He sees the man make many phone calls, and he listens from outside.

The rescuer is trying to find someone called Bucky.

It takes many minutes to remember that the rescuer once called the Soldier “Bucky.”

The rescuer is still trying to find the man he danced with.

The Soldier opens the window, slides through. He is a good soldier, perfectly quiet, so the rescuer does not notice until he turns around. 

The rescuer drops the phone.

“You saved me,” the Soldier says. The Soldier does not like the way his voice sounds; it sounds rough, angry, and he wants to sound kind, grateful.

The rescuer looks lost. “I tried to. I’m sorry.”

The Soldier does not understand. “You saved me,” he repeats, “So I came to protect you.”

Tears fall from the rescuer’s eyes, but he is smiling. “I’ve been looking for you.”

The Soldier nods. The rescuer will always try to save him. 

The rescuer comes near, and the Soldier’s mind falters, he thinks of all the ways that the rescuer could hurt him, all the ways the Soldier could kill, but he makes no move, he swallows the not-father’s words down to a dark useless place, and he does nothing.

The rescuer looks nervous. He reaches a hand toward the Soldier and holds the hand there, waiting. 

The Soldier shakes his hand. His muscles remember making this motion long ago.

The Soldier lets go then, reaches up, slowly, so the rescuer isn’t frightened. He runs his skin-covered fingers through the rescuer’s hair. It feels soft, smooth. It smells like soap and sweat. 

“I remember,” the Soldier tells him, and the rescuer smiles wide, impossibly wide, like he believes they’ll be happy forever.


End file.
